No Man's Sky Is Finally Getting Multiplayer

[Archiee]

In the above video from Inside Xbox, Sean Murray breaks down many of the key features said to be included in No Man's Sky Next, the version of the space exploration game that is launching on Xbox One this summer. If you're already playing on PC or PlayStation 4, though, there's no need to worry. The Next content will be patched into those copies of the game on July 24 at no extra charge.

Murray is touting this as a big update, finally making good on the original game's promise to bring players into the same shared universe. Players will be able to build group bases, explore and travel together, or even ruin the lives of other players in the game. Dogfighting is also included, another ability that was shown in the game's promotional videos but never actually made the final product.

No Man's Sky has certainly had a unique existence. The game was poorly marketed, by which we mean there were quite a few promises made that were never delivered. It was made to look like a big, multiplayer space opera, while the final product proved to be more of your standard survival game, where players were left to explore and fight space pirates on their own.

When HelloGames was called out (by many, many vocal sources) for not delivering on the game's promises, they vowed to stay dedicated to the game and keep on working to make it lived up to its potential. Considering how poorly things went, you wouldn't have been faulted for expecting the developers to release a couple of light patches, shrug and say, "sorry we let you down, we'll do better on our next game."

Instead, for the past two years, No Man's Sky has grown by leaps and bounds. The team has implemented many new features and even introduced a sort of quasi-multiplayer experience. The "Atlus" update launched last August introduced 30 hours of deeper story progression, new guild missions, better interstellar trading, new controls, stargates for easier navigation, terrain manipulation, new equipment and ships, low altitude flight and much, much more.

And again, they could have stopped there. But, instead, they recently announced an updated version of the game was coming to a new platform on Xbox One, complete with new features and the long-awaited multiplayer functionality, and old-school players will receive the update free of charge.

If folks are willing to forgive and forget, this summer could be huge for No Man's Sky. Again, we're not saying nobody should be sore for how the original game turned out, but we definitely give the team credit for sticking with the game and continuing to build until it finally delivers on expectations.